Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers
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With anger and compassion, Arundhati Roy's new book maps India's turbulent present and possible futures. Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Genocide, denial, and truth-as-a-victim are just a few of the big subjects dealt with by Booker prize-winning Indian author and activist Roy (The God of Small Things) in this essay collection, written with fluid precision and acute rage. Covering rampant injustices in India and Kashmir perpetrated by governments and corporations, most in the past decade, Roy is unfailingly eloquent, sorting through a complicated network of special interests and partisan governmental groups to reveal nuances of corruption and oppression even to non-nationals. Roy worries that "the space for nonviolent civil disobedience has atrophied," but finds hope and joy in developments including the "hundreds of thousands of unarmed people" returning to Kashmir "to reclaim their cities, their streets and mohallas," and a generation raised in "army camps, check-posts, and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a sound track" who have "discovered the power of mass protest and, above all, the dignity of being able to... speak for themselves." Roy details genocide instigated by Hindu interests against Muslims, revisits the recent Mumbai massacre, and pleads the people's case as vast rural areas are drained of resources while the Indian ruling class concentrates on corporate globalization. The Bush administration also comes in for scathing criticism in this vivid inside look at India's turbulent growth. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents Map of India....................ixIntroduction Democracy's Failing Light....................1One Democracy: Who's She When She's at Home?....................30Two How Deep Shall We Dig?....................50Three "And His Life Should Become Extinct"....................68Four Breaking the News....................100Five Custodial Confessions, the Media, and the Law....................113Six Baby Bush, Go Home....................118Seven Animal Farm II: In Which George Bush Says What He Really Means....................120Eight Scandal in the Palace....................128Nine Listening to Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial, and Celebration....................141Ten Azadi....................169Eleven Nine Is Not Eleven (And November Isn't September)....................184Twelve The Briefing....................202Glossary....................211Sources....................216Notes....................219Index....................245
